4:2:0? Green Screen Tips

Many different people dry-hire the studio and bring in their own preferred camera and operator. It's amazing though that they bring in cameras that do not support a 4:2:2 or higher colour space. You may even be asking what even is colour space? If you are new to recording your corporate video in front of a green screen you want to be sure that the camera is capable of capturing the image with enough colour information that will allow your post production compositing software to quickly and precisely remove the green for your preferred background.

Many cameras even at a professional level record a compressed format that have a colour space of 4:2:0. Meaning less detail is there and ultimately the result of the 'key' will actually be rather poor. Edges will be made super soft to compensate for the jagged edges that result from shooting using compression.

It's important that you know your camera operator uses codecs that contain enough information to make sure your final result is a perfect key. At Corpcast, our cameras all support the 4:2:2 colour space and we prefer using the ProRes codec. This means your production will look its best from the very beginning. The mantra of 'fix it in post' is not one we subscribe to. Everything needs to be right before we even press record.